The airport, backed up by the airlines, say a series of walk-outs by striking security workers, including a four-day strike over the Easter weekend, caused no hold-ups for departing passengers. Union leaders insist their action has caused severe delays and used the airport website to prove their point. But they were left fuming when the site was changed to show far less information.

An airport spokesman today admitted they had changed the website because, they claimed, information was being "misrepresented" and used as a public relations weapon by union officials.

Dave McCall, north west region secretary of the Transport and General Workers'' Union, said: "This is a cynical attempt to cover up the truth about the delays and, even if the delays weren't down to the strike, it shows the airport has a worse punctuality record than Virgin Trains."

Website changed

An airport statement said: "The website layout has been changed because it is impossible to show the specific reason for any delay and this information was being misrepresented by the TGWU in claiming their strike action was having an impact on the airport operation.

"In truth, the strike action has had no effect and although there have been delays these were due to circumstances outside the airport's control, such as air traffic delays, late arrival of aircraft, missing passengers and technical problems.

"The airlines have confirmed that the industrial action has not affected their operations and that the airport operates better during strikes."

A survey of the website by the M.E.N. over a three-week period before Easter showed the vast majority of 119 flight departures checked at random suffered a delay.

During the first week, we failed to find a single flight, which departed on time. In the last two weeks, we found nine flights which departed either on time or early.

We found after the first week, the make-up of the website changed, with the removal of the status of flights yet to depart and also far fewer flights were listed.

Nevertheless, we found more than 24 hours of delays in our survey, the worst was a 1hr 37mins. The average hold-up was 14mins.